Disney`s Fairy-tale Season At The Box Office

The figures are in, and it`s safe to say that Christmas belonged to Disney.

With ``Three Men and a Baby`` already the season`s No. 1 hit, and with

``Good Morning Vietnam`` making a whopping $11.7 million to date (though it didn`t go into wide release until recently), Disney came up looking good. And the studio had ``Cinderella,`` too.

What gives? It`s not just clever marketing. It`s casting and confidence. Jeffrey Katzenberg, president of Disney`s motion picture division, and studio Chairman Michael Eisner are willing to fly against the popular wisdom of who`s hot and who`s not in casting their movies. They`re also willing to drastically rewrite the scripts.

Disney didn`t react the way just about any other studio would have when the French domestic comedy ``Trois Hommes et Une Couffin`` fared dismally at the U.S. box office. They went ahead with the remake of ``Three Men and a Baby`` because they knew it would work.

Disney recognized that the comedy`s appeal was primarily to women. So instead of packaging three hip-but-pricey ``Saturday Night Live`` alumni

(well-liked by men), they assembled an inexpensive ensemble of two handsome TV stars (Tom Selleck and Ted Danson) who have not excelled in movies (in the past, Selleck was cast as a male action hero rather than a charming playboy)

and a likable comic actor (Steve Guttenberg), none of whom could have carried the picture on his own.

Casting was also crucial in ``Good Morning Vietnam,`` produced by Disney`s Touchstone Pictures. Standup comedians-with the notable exceptions of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, who play themselves, and Steve Martin-often have trouble integrating their personalities into a film narrative.

Before Disney, Bette Midler and Robin Williams had had varying success as screen actors. After Midler`s appropriately titled ``Jinxed,`` Disney successfully returned the actress to her comic self in ``Down and Out in Beverly Hills.`` The studio decided to do the same thing for Williams. They allowed him to perform his brilliant standup act.

The other Christmas winner was Paramount, which relied on its stable of sequels and tried-and-true performers, in this case John Hughes` ``Planes, Trains and Automobiles`` (Hughes has since defected to Universal) and Eddie Murphy`s ``Raw.`` But like the other studios, Paramount spends a lot more than Disney, which maintains its $13 million per-picture average.

Although ``Planes, Trains`` grossed respectably, it cost almost $30 million. Observers speculate that ``Planes`` might have fared even better if it hadn`t been up against Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal in Orion`s comedy

``Throw Momma from the Train.``

Judging by the holiday box-office response, Goldie Hawn`s star seems to be falling. Industry watchers are starting to say that ``Private Benjamin``

must have been a fluke. Hawn needed a hit, and MGM`s ``Overboard`` was a conservative choice on her part. As in ``Private Benjamin,`` a spoiled rich woman is thrown into a blue-collar environment, where she discovers the terrific person she really is.

MGM`s ads stressed Hawn as a tough character, not the sweet ditz her audience wants to see.

But as Hawn`s ``Swing Shift`` already demonstrated, that audience was clearly not drawn by the teaming of Hawn and Kurt Russell.

As Christmas moviegoers rejected the nasty Goldie Hawn, they also spurned the angry Barbra Streisand, except for her most loyal fans.

Throughout her career, Streisand has been most successful playing the ugly duckling who yearns for the handsome prince (``The Way We Were,``

lacked romance, its subject matter (child molestation) was unpleasant-and Streisand didn`t sing. Many Oscar handicappers are saying she might not get a nomination this year.

The ``Nuts`` price tag (in the $30 million range) was almost as high as Warner Bros.` other costly Christmas disappointment, Steven Spielberg`s China epic, ``Empire of the Sun`` ($30 million to $35 million). Perhaps because it did not earn rave reviews from the critics, Warner was up a creek: There was nothing left to sell.

(although the picture looks like an Oscar natural), the studio probably should have widened distribution of the tough-to-sell apartheid drama while it still had some momentum. Now the movie, which is less likely than ``Empire``

to get nominations, seems to be dead in the water.

It`s clear that audiences over 12 are tired of the Spielberg fantasy genre (although ``Raiders III`` is sure to be a huge hit, thanks to advance interest in the film), so Universal figured that its Spielberg production,

``Batteries Not Included`` (also costly, at $25 million), played best for kids. The studio staged national Sunday family sneak previews and successfully pulled in the holiday kiddie crowd.

Twentieth Century-Fox`s two holiday season hits were on the upscale side. Oliver Stone`s ``Wall Street`` boasted a widely lauded villain in Michael Douglas and was entertaining, though not easy for mainstream audiences to follow. The film garnered mixed notices.

Although James L. Brooks` equally topical ``Broadcast News`` was designed for yuppies as well, its stellar cast and screenplay earned it rave reviews and five New York Film Critics prizes, thus instantly making it the Oscar front-runner.